Title: Position of South China in configuration of Neoproterozoic supercontinent
Abstract: Configuration and evolution of Neoproterozoic supercontinent and the position of South China within it have been very important targets in earth sciences concerning many forefront topics of general interest.In the common reconstruction of the supercontinent Rodinia, South China was located between Australia and Laurentia, and thus lies in the center of the supercontinent and southeast of Australia [1] .According to the new paleomagnetic and geochronological data for the ~800 Ma Xiaofeng dyke in Yichang as well as existing data, Li et al. [2] suggest that Rodinia would probably spread from the equator to the polar region at about 800 Ma, followed by a rapid ca.90 rotation around an axis near Greenland that brought the entire supercontinent to a low-latitude position by ca.750 Ma.As a result, South China is reinterpreted to be placed adjacent to both Australia and India, with a rapid shift of rotation from a position northeast of Australia and southeast of India at about 800 Ma (Fig. 1(a)) to a position northwest of Australia and northeast of India at about 750 Ma (Fig. 1(b)).By combining existing paleomagnetic data [3] with their new paleomagnetic data for the Cambrian sediments in the Sichuan Basin, Yang et al. [4] also place South China against northwestern Australia but remote southeast of India at about 755 Ma.In the Paleopangaea reconstruction [5] , South China was placed in northeast of India.In the discussion of relationship between the Rodinia configuration and the snowball Earth event [6] , South China was tentatively placed in northwest of India.In dynamic models of reconstructing the Rodinia assemblage and breakup on the basis of global paleomagnetic data, Powell et al. [7] placed South China in northeast of Australia and thus remote east of India; Meert and Torsvik [8,9] placed South China in northeast of Australia and northwest of Laurentia, interjacent between two transform faults in its southeast and southwest.Geochemical studies of Zhou et al. [10,11] suggest that Neoproterozoic magmatic rocks in the western and northwestern margins of the South China block resemble metaigneous complexes occurring along Seychelles to Madagascar in Indian Ocean and Malani in India [12] , having the origin of island arc for some of them.For this reason, Yan et al. [13] suggested that South China was adjacent